We always threaten to escape the mundane, to shake things up. However, routine is easy and comforting – it is the path of least resistance, and as a society, we tend to fall back to it.

Severance acts as our warning. I believe Ma is trying to save us from ourselves; she implores us to fight inertia and not sleepwalk through our days. In the world she has created, and the one our main character Candace Chen lives in, a symptom of an epidemic fever is quite literally performing a continuous circuit of menial tasks. Some water their plants over and over again, while others pray, eat, repeat even when nothing remains on their plates.

I enjoyed the broad premise. Candace is one of the few survivors of the fever, seemingly immune to the airborne virus. She eventually is forced out of New York City, where she meets a group of unafflicted. As they travel in this post-apocalyptic world, Ma gives us more insight into Candace’s past where she explores a wide array of topics – immigration, childhood pressures, relationships, work-life balance, and a general quest for meaning.

Ma seamlessly jumps from past to present. However, I kept waiting for the dots to connect to have a bigger impact on Candace’s current (and precarious) situation. I felt unsatisfied at the end – the story ends rather abruptly. Ultimately, I believe this is a coming-of-age book that is more about the journey than the destination. I enjoyed this as a thought exercise on our current society, but I think the action and story could still have been completed without sacrificing the message.

Verdict: Skip It (3/5 Stars)
Length: 290 pages
Quote: I went home in the evening. I repeated the routine.

Buy Severance by Ling Ma